Club for Growth President David McIntosh released a statement expressing the influential conservative group’s strong opposition to House Speaker Paul Ryan’s Obamacare-lite, as Republicans party-wide are now calling the GOP leadership healthcare plan that does not follow through on GOP campaign promises to repeal and replace Obamacare.
McIntosh said in his statement:
The problems with this bill are not just what’s in it, but also what’s missing: namely, the critical free-market solution of selling health insurance across state lines. Such an injection of competition would lead to hundreds of billions of dollars in savings, nullifying any argument by Congressional Republicans that this provision cannot be included in the current bill. If this warmed-over substitute for government-run health care remains unchanged, the Club for Growth will key vote against it. Republicans should be offering a full and immediate repeal of Obamacare’s taxes, regulations, and mandates, an end to the Medicaid expansion, and inclusion of free-market reforms, like interstate competition.
The Club for Growth is an influential conservative organization that has helped many Republicans get elected in recent years, and with the group’s strong opposition to the Obamacare-lite package it may peel off enough House Republicans to hurt the bill’s chances in that chamber. Many House Republicans, including Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Mark Meadows (R-NC)–the former and current chairs of the House Freedom Caucus–are publicly opposed to Paul Ryan’s Obamacare-lite bill already.
There are also questions as to whether the bill can pass the U.S. Senate as well, with at least two U.S. Senators publicly opposed to the legislation and one promising he would oppose it–more than enough to kill a bill without bipartisan support, as this is unlikely to receive, in the Senate.